WHILE we, as students of European history, are aware of the harsh conditions imposed on Germany by the 1919 Treaty of Versailles, few have any idea about what the victors did to Germany after the Second World War.
West Germany remained without a government for nearly four years, German armed forces were abolished, industrial plants were removed wholesale to other countries or were blown up, and of the 10 million ethnic Germans deported from Czechoslovakia, Poland, Russia and elsewhere, at least 1.5 million died in the process. Hundreds of thousands of German civilians and prisoners of war worked as slave labour in Allied countries.
After nearly four years of a state-less existence, Germans got a government of their own when the three western zones were united into West Germany, with its capital at Bonn, in May 1949. Sovereignty was granted in May 1952, and occupation officially ended in May 1955. From then on, until the USSR’s collapse in 1989 and Germany’s unification in 1990, Bonn pursued a foreign policy that holds out a lesson or two for countries such as Pakistan that have an acute security problem.
During these gloomy decades (1952 to 1990), Germans had the wisdom not to diversify foreign policy objectives and held fast to one strategic doctrine — total commitment to the Atlantic alliance — and one unalterable aim: saving what was left of Germany from “Asiatic barbarians”, a herrevolk epithet that represented Russia, Judaism and Communism in one go. On such issues as German reunification or a peace treaty, the Bonn government aligned its policies totally with those of America, Britain and France, and took no major foreign policy initiative without first clearing it from these three governments. If there was a disagreement among the three Nato players, Bonn would go by what Washington wanted.
Germany’s astonishing economic recovery and the predominant role it came to acquire in the European Common Market — now the European Union — didn’t go to its head. A man of the stature of Konrad Adenauer, chancellor of (west) Germany after WWII, when asked about his unqualified support for American policies, replied: “Who do you think won the war?” On the home front, a strict watch was kept on the possible rise of Nazism, and the printing of Mein Kampf, Hitler’s pictures, the swastika and other Nazi emblems was prohibited.
A proud nation with great cultural and scientific achievements — and known until the Nazi era as a nation of poets and philosophers —Germany didn’t allow false notions of pride and sovereignty to blur its one, fundamental objective: survival. The country continued to host Allied military bases and did not turn this into an issue of national pride, even though foreign troops finally left Berlin as late as 1994.
The collapse of East Germany, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the country’s unification and the restoration of unified Berlin as the capital showed that the patience exercised by a well-informed populace and their leaders’ realistic foreign policy had paid off. Germany was united by peaceful means, even though it had to accept the loss of territories east of the Oder-Neisse line.
The USSR’s disintegration and the emergence of former Soviet satellites as independent states changed the picture for Germany. Not only was the USSR no longer Germany’s neighbour, there were buffer states in between — Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Ukraine and Byelorussia. Meanwhile, as Nato expanded eastwards, Germans for the first time since 1945 found Russia wasn’t breathing down their necks. It was now time for Germany to follow a more German foreign policy.
Still committed to the Atlantic alliance, Germany took a major foreign policy decision on its own in 1991 — it unilaterally recognised Croatia and Slovenia, prompting its Nato partners to grumble and charge that Berlin’s hasty recognition had led to the Bosnian war and precipitated Yugoslavia’s disintegration. However, the real assertion of German independence came as George Bush Jr planned his invasion of Iraq.
If Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder chose to oppose the Iraq war, he had calculated his move well and ensured that not only would his country not be in isolation, he would have powerful supporters in Europe and the world. As war approached and it became clear that Bush would bypass the UN, opposition grew worldwide. Not only were Russia and China in opposition, so was the entire Arab-Islamic world and most third world states.
In Europe and America there were widespread anti-war sentiments and demonstrations. But Schroeder’s trump card lay in Paris, for Jacques Chirac, too, didn’t approve of the war plans. The two met at a small German town, Schwerin, and issued the eponymous declaration that pledged opposition to the Iraqi invasion. The Schwerin declaration sent waves across the Bush-era White House, for it was for the first time in the post-war era that Germany and France had ‘ganged up’.
On a cultural plane, movie buffs should see the film Downfall, based on the book by Hitler’s most quoted secretary, Traudl Junge. Directed by Oliver Hirschbiegel, the movie shows some humane aspects to Hitler’s life, and SS soldiers are presented both as bloodthirsty and as ‘normal’ human beings willing to help. Such a film was inconceivable in Germany up to the ’80s.
Nazism may not rise again in the same form, for nuclear weapons have changed Europe’s historical pattern of war and peace. Nevertheless, the rise of Germany as probably the strongest economic power in a continent rocked by the euro crisis, and its possible close relationship with France, could in future lead to fissures in the Atlantic alliance and create a new power relationship at a time when new centres of power are emerging in the East.
For Pakistan’s foreign policy managers, there are lessons to be learned in Germany’s conduct of external relations in the post-war period.
The writer is a member of staff.